ok so today i was running a bit late and picked up an atkins bar that supposedly has only 2 g net carbs but it says it has 22grams total and only 10g dietary fiber - by my count that is still 12 carbs - explainations welcome

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Goal by July 2010 - 175
Goal by September 2010- 155

When I was on Atkins after I lost about 20lbs. I started buying the Atkins Endulge bars as a treat...and it completely stalled my weight loss..it had a lot more sugar alcohols in it though...plus some bad side effects from the sugar alcohols.

Oh My...here we go with the Atkins bars again Atkins Nutritionals claims they are "appropriate for Induction" which makes absolutely NO SENSE! Read the label..it says they contain SOY, MILK & PEANUTS. Where are any of these ingredients on the acceptable foods list for Induction They also state they contain 0 grams of sugar alcohol. The Chocolate Peanut Butter bar starts out with 22 total carbs...it contains 10 grams of fiber...this brings the total net carbs to 12...HOWEVER, the label states they are 2 net carbs Confused yet?? Glycerin is deducted and guess what glycerin is....Yup, its a SUGAR ALCOHOL!!! Save your almost $2 per bar and make yourself some tuna salad or a hard boiled egg....You'll be happy you did!!

The Hungry Girl website had an article about a "breakfast cookie" (don't remember the brand), that when tested turned out to have twice as many calories as stated on the nutrition label. A show on the food channel, revealed that all of the vegetarian marshmallows tested, contained gelatin (an animal product). The makers of the candies were all buying a gelatin replacement product from a single manufacturer that lied about the contents of their product. All of the vegetarian marshmallow makers closed down or discontinued selling vegetarian marshmallows, but one. That one closed until the owner was able to develop a truly vegetarian marshmallow (which was tested by an independent lab, and confirmed to be gelatin free).

While I believe most nutritional labels are fairly accurate, this is another reason to eat fewer processed foods, and to come to grips with the fact that if information seems too good to be true, it may just be because it isn't true.

Hi Chickadee,
Thanks...I'm not doing atkins anymore..I did it about 3 years ago and loss 30lbs..It worked well for me that time. I had tons of energy and lost a lot of weight but I guess I realized I couldn't eat like that forever and I inevitably gained back about 20lbs due to winter and not being able to walk. Now I'm basically just calorie counting...but I still keep an eye on my carbs..but not as strict as the induction phase. Atkins was a good diet for me it gave me tons of energy and taught me about eating the wrong carbs. Good luck to you.

I think the idea of subtracting net carbs, assumes that the nutrition label has not done the calorie math correctly. I did not realize that there is apparently two ways to calculate calories. If cellulose (or fiber) calories are "counted," the calorie count of an item is somewhat inaccurate. Humans cannot digest cellulose and therefore cannot pull any of the calories from it. If you gave it to a beaver - (because of intestinal parasites I think - the only critter that can actually digest cellulose without help I believe are termites or some other type of insect) anyway if you gave it to a beaver he could get fat on fiber calories, but they just go through our systems unused.

So, if the nutrition label doesn't do the math with humans in mind in terms of "usable" calories, then subtracting the carb grams (or calories from fiber) would be fine. However, apparently some nutrition labels do the math for us, and subtract the calories humans can't access. This is nice and all, but since there are two ways to calculate calories, we need to know which one was used. Otherwise we could be subracting calories/fiber grams that have already been subtracted.

This makes the calorie content for any food that contains 1 gram of fiber or more suspect. To find out whether the item already has the fiber calories subtracted, you'd have to do the math yourself (not going in to how to do that, but any basic nutrition book would explain it). I'm not willing to do that, so I just use the calorie count given, and do not figure net carbs. I may be overestimating the calories and carbs I eat this way. Maybe if I were eating fewer than 1200 calories a day, I'd rethink that, but for now I don't mind knowing I am overestimating my calories/carb intake.

well i will be avoiding them in the future as much as possible but i am more worried about going over my carbs as i am in induction i dont want to start all over so i dont know what to do - i am guessing i must be in ketosis though since i havent been hungry at all today and havent eaten much - yuck forcing myslef to eat because i know i have to isnt fun

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Goal by July 2010 - 175
Goal by September 2010- 155